BENQ LW61ST BlueCore Light Engine

Looks interesting, even though it's an XGA (4:3) PJ it does bring the potential for a HT Laser PJ much closer.
Price is reasonable as well, contrast is good on paper as are the lumens it puts out.
Don't know how hard/easy it is for Benq to kick it up a notch to Full HD status, but if there are no roadblocks I'm starting to get that sinking feeling on why I just put down my money for an X30/RS45...

No idea either how hard/easy it would be to implement 3D on something like this.

You're right about the 3D, they mention it in the specs.
I was just hesitant since I didn't know the technical implications of a laser light source in combination with DLP...

If they'd only made it FullHD instead of WXGA, they would've crushed the competition this year..... provided it's any good in real life of course
At the price they list it at in the EU, compared to 720p PJ's the price is inflated. You could buy a lot of lamps for that price difference.

It's supposed to be on show in Amsterdam at the ISE convention... Still tempted to go take a look now...
Would be a good way to find out if the contrast rating is being achieved via DI or whether they are talking native. I'm guessing it will be the former but laser was supposed to yield good contrast natively if memory serves.

Yes, but the LED/Laser combo poses its own set of intricacies with regard to calibration...
I'm assuming that this will not be the case with a pure laser solution.

Looked at the manual for the 61ST and found that it has a version of color management. Could not tell how sophisticated it was or if it was available for the HDMI input. Can someone more techie than me read the manual and comment? Also, how much does this thing cost and when is it available?

There is a spec sheet also available for download and it shows a distance to screen for a 100" screen to be 41.45" with a 2.63" offset. This seems like an incredibly short distance. If it is correct I suspect it's not going to work for home theater. Seems like it would be hard to get accurately proportioned image and with a 2" offset the projector would be too visible in the viewing path. Any thoughts?

Some prices have started surfacing, this pj carries a 2k$ tag in a couple of retailers. I don't see how a 720p "business" pj, even a lampless one, would be enticing at that price, at least for HT use. If it were a HT pj with good quality image etc, sure, but i have a feeling if such were the case, it would be marketed as one.

But at that price you get a reasonably good FHD HT pj and a couple of lamps as well.

Let's hope that the price listed is wrong.

My thoughts exactly. Due to the intended market for this PJ, I don't think it'll match nicely in a HT. But that doesn't mean that this could not be a heads-up of things to come in a relatively short time. That being said, move the PJ further back and I don't know how many of their quoted 2000 lumens will remain after calibration...



Like I said, list price over here indicates the same thing: too expensive for what it is currently.
However, if they could use the same tech, in FullHD, make it longer throw while not sacrificing too much light, and confirm that it has 80.000:1 native contrast at a price that's around or slightly above that of the current crop of 3000$ PJ's, than they could have a winner on their hands... but that's a lot of ifs ands and buts!

Wow 2K USD is low, compared to the € price I was given by the Benq Europe marketing director at ISE. The WXGA Shorth Throw unit is clearly aimed at the education/classroom market, and that market receives serious discounts, but the list prices for those projectors are generally very high. I was told it will start to arrive at the end of Q2 i.e. June. And will cost €3000,-. And he agreed that for the classroom it needed to be run in normal mode. And now I see they use 50% brightness as end of life time. Very uncommon for LED projectors, wich dropp off 5-10% over the 20-50K hours life specified. 10K hours in eco mode and the output is allready down to 61%.

Presuming the same drop-off rate in normal mode, it will be at 1200 lumens after just 5K hours.

I overheared the Viewsonic will also be 3000. They kept standing in front of the small screen, discussing 'too much. People buy between 2000 and 3000. But the colors, look at the colors', if they don't want you to hear they should step aside, a show is to show;-). So image looked not too bright, but colors rich and picture not washed out.

The Qumis were showing a very tiny image. Guess they realize it only offers 40 percent of the specified 300 lumens. Eatmeat the Chinese measured 118 lumens didn't they, 120 lumens is only 40% of 300 lumens;-).

Have you heared about the LG 600? 600 specced lumens.

How can this compete with the Casio? The Casio is less than $1K for 2000 lumens and offers the same 20K light source life.

I suppose that's because it's not a LED but a Laser-diode based projector.

No need for that sinking feeling. Just think how many years/proposed release dates/etc. we will go through before a laser projector reaches the performance level of the R45. It will be a while, trust me. I'm thinking over 3 years, maybe more.

Could these laser projectors do any harm to the eyes , may be in the long run ? At the end of the day what we are watching is reflected illumination of the laser and all of us here know how intense an energy radiation it is .

No, it's because this is a hybrid projector.


This means you will have phosphor aging the same as in a Plasma or CRT. The drop-off in light output is consistent with what you would see in CRT technology.

Mike

Nope, 1000 lumens is 1000 lumens, regardless of the light source.

Mike

Coherent and collimated, or converged laser light is dangerous. However, as the technology is implemented in projectors, it is relatively safe. In the Benq LW61ST, laser light is never projected directly out of the lens. The laser strikes a phosphor surface, and it is the phosphor that produces the light leaving the lens.

In the Casio projectors, as i understand it, a blue laser does generate blue for the projector, but the beam has been spread out (diverged) which reduces the energy per unit area. I'm just speculating but they also may employ a diffuser on the color wheel which would reduce speckle and coherency of the blue light, making it safer as well.

As I read above that 1000 Lumen is 1000 lumen irrespective of the light source , I would like to add a fact that 1000 lumen is the measurement of the visual spectrum of the light not he UV portion or some other ones. I donot know if lasers produce UV or not however I do know that every gas discharge lamp produces UV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjL1Htk6z24

There is also optoma's version:
http://www.optomausa.com/products/detail/ZW210ST

Any more news or prices on this ?

edit: never mind, found it on amazon.

Another question, will the moving color wheel make it 20k hours? How long before the bearings go out, they always break.
Edited by uuddlrlrbass - 10/19/12 at 3:10am

Anyone have any experience with this projector yet?

Hello, i bought this projector 1 week ago. I found it in a very good price of 1050 Euros with 21 working hours...It's the first time I buy a projector and also I don't have time to search every detail...but if you need some answers I can run some tests...
I would like to learn if I can operate the projector with any USB wireless dongle or should I buy the Benq ?
Also I didn't manage to see a 3D movie....the screen was split in half (horizontally) I played the movie with KM Player eventually and with some adjustments the screen was one. But I used the cheap glasses form the cinema...

any one know about this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKgdiIrgdyo

Anyone have any experience with this projector yet? I would like to buy it like a home cinema. Could you recomend me it?